I first met Brenda Porter when the company she worked for, a women’s adventure travel company, sent her to be our guide for a retreat I created with my wife, Karyn: writing and yoga in the Sacred Valley of Peru seven years ago. When Brenda showed up at the retreat center, I could tell within the first half hour that she would be an outstanding guide and group leader, and she was. Over the course of the next two weeks, exploring Peru together with our group, what intrigued me about Brenda most was how she sketched and painted little “on-the-go” watercolors whenever she had a spare moment.
It was a conversation during that trip that planted the seed for our collaboration designing the Creative Camino trip we’re co-leading right now. Because of the pandemic, it took years to bring this trip to fruition, but last year, we finally did it. And now, here we are, doing it a second time. Both times, we brought in Andre Mallinger as the third member of our leadership team—a wonderful hiking guide, musician, and history lover.
One of the bonuses for me here as I walk across Spain is that I receive the gift of Brenda’s art instruction myself. I am a complete beginner, don’t consider myself a visual artist, so I spend part of each of her classes certain I can’t do it, insisting I’m “not an artist,” believing (more on some days, less on others) that what I’m producing is “bad.” Yet I persist and ultimately enjoy it.
It’s always good for me as a teacher to be a student, particularly at something that has zero relationship to any native talent. It reminds me how hard it is to learn, how tender and vulnerable my students feel, and how much I am asking of them every day!
The other thing I love about sitting in on Brenda‘s classes is that she and I continually say the same things about creativity and the creative process. For instance, today Brenda was talking about leaving out the poles that were right in front of us that were blocking the landscape we were going to paint. She said, “It’s your artist’s prerogative to ignore anything that’s not part of your story.“ I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said exactly the same thing about writing!
The other thing I’m really enjoying is watching women who primarily consider themselves writers enjoying art and those who consider themselves to be more inclined as visual artists (and not writers), surprised at how much they enjoy writing. The cross fertilization is amazingly fruitful.
Yesterday, after ten hours walking the Camino, Brenda and Cary and I chose to paint and sketch one more time at a late afternoon stop that Brenda had picked out for us. After a long day walking, everyone else was very eager to walk the final kilometers to the hotel, shower, and relax! But Brenda and Cary and I stayed behind to paint. The intimacy of the three of us working silently, sitting in a row, staring up at the same statue of Mary holding Jesus, was beautiful. Every once in a while, I’d say, “But Brenda, I don’t know how to draw the face.” Or “But I don’t know how to do the rest.” And she put down her pen or brush and give me a few tips in her patient, loving way.
Take a look at these pictures and their captions to learn more about this wonderful interplay of writing and art— and why I love Brenda as a teacher, collaborator, and leader.
I’m definitely looking forward my next collaboration with Brenda—a writing/art trip to Turkey next spring: http://www.lauradavis.net/turkey
Tomorrow….back on the Camino. We are all loving the rhythm of this creative Camino.